Marco Arment: "Everyone should play by the same rules. A proposal: storage capacities referenced or implied in the names or advertisements for personal computers, tablets, and smartphones should not exceed the amount of space available for end-user installation of third-party applications and data, after enough software has been installed to enable all commonly advertised functionality. With today's OSes, iPads could advertise capacities no larger than 12, 28, 60, and 124 GB and the Surface Pros could be named 23 and 83 GB." Wholly agreed. When I buy a box of 100 staples, I expect it to contain ~100 staples - not 50 because the other 50 are holding the box together.

And I just want to keeps things simple and correct. Stating the total storage amount is more simple (it's 100% correct) than stating the amount of free space, which can change with updates to the system.

Maybe Microsoft will make their Windows install in Surface smaller after people complain regarding the free space. Then a 18 GB Surface would be able to hold 22 GB. It would make even less sense than a 16 GB device being able to store 12 of user content.